Success and How He Won It Part 30

The man was right after all; he had received no instructions for such an exceptional case as that of his mistress paying a visit to his master's room. It was truly the first time she had been there.

Hitherto, they had only met in her boudoir, at table, or in the drawing-rooms. The present visit might well create surprise among the servants.

Arthur signed to the man to go, and came back into the study with his wife. She hesitated a little on the threshold.

"I wished to speak to you," she said, in a low voice.

"I am quite at your service."

He closed the door and pushed forward an armchair, inviting her by a gesture to be seated. These few minutes had sufficed to give him back all that self-control which he had so constantly exercised during the past few weeks. He spoke and moved in a cool measured way, as though showing politeness to a strange lady in a strange salon.

"Will you not sit down?"

"Thank you, I shall not detain you long."

There was something shy and uncertain in her manner which contrasted oddly with her usual composure. Perhaps in these rooms she felt ill at ease, or perhaps she found it hard to open the conversation.

Arthur did not come to her a.s.sistance. He saw that she twice tried to find words and failed, but he stood at his table silent and constrained, and waited.

"My father has told me of his talk with you," she began, "and also of its result."

"So I expected, and--excuse me, Eugenie--it was just on that account I was surprised to see you here. I thought you were occupied with the preparations for your departure."

These words were probably intended to counteract any impression his agitation at seeing her might have produced, and they had the desired result. Some seconds clasped before she continued.

"You had already spoken of my journey to the servants in the afternoon?"

"Yes, I thought you would wish it, and it seemed best that the order for the necessary preparation should come from me. Had you thought of introducing the subject in any other way? If so, I regret that I was not earlier made acquainted with your views."

His tone was frigid, and Eugenie felt as though an icy breath had been wafted over to her. Involuntarily she retreated a step.

"I have no observation to make, only it surprised me that my departure, the date of which had once been fixed, should now be hastened on. You had, I thought, reasons which would have induced you to keep to our arrangement."

"I? On this point I yielded to a wish, to a request of yours. Baron Windeg gave me to understand, at least, that it was so."

Eugenie started. She drew a long breath of relief, and all shyness and uncertainty vanished, as though, with this one answer, her courage had wholly returned to her.

"I thought so! My father went too far, Arthur; he spoke in my name, when he was only setting forth his own wishes. I have come now to clear up this misunderstanding, and to tell you that I shall not go, at least not until I hear from your lips that you wish me to do so."

Eugenie watched him with breathless attention, as though striving to read in his eyes what was pa.s.sing in his mind; but they were downcast still, and her words produced no visible effect. His features relaxed once as she spoke of a misunderstanding, or so she fancied, but the change in him was but momentary, and, after a pause of a few seconds, he replied coldly and composedly as ever: "You will not go? And why not?" She stepped up to him and said resolutely: "You told me yourself the other day that all your future is involved in the coming struggle.

I know since our last meeting with Hartmann that it will be fought out to the uttermost, and that your position is even more critical than you will allow. At such a time I can and will not leave you, it would be cowardly, and" ...

"You are very generous," interrupted Arthur with ill-concealed bitterness. "But to perform an act of generosity, some one must be found willing to accept it, and I certainly am not willing to accept yours."

Eugenie's hand grasped the chair near her, she pressed her fingers tightly into its velvet cushions, as though in repressed anger.

"Not?"

"No. The plan was of your father's making, so be it. He is doubtless right in requiring that his daughter, who will shortly be his altogether again, should be placed in safety and protected from those rough scenes and excesses which, in all probability, may take place here. I am quite of his opinion, and I agree fully to to-morrow's separation."

She raised her head and said with spirit,

"And I only agreed to it when I thought it was your wish. I cannot yield in this matter to my father's will alone. I have taken upon myself the duties of your wife, in the sight of the world at least, and, so far, I shall fulfil them. They command me not to desert you basely in the face of that which threatens you, but to remain at your side until the worst has been tided over, and the date originally fixed for our parting has come. Then I will go, and not before."

"Not if I expressly ask you to do so?"

"Arthur!"

He stood half turning from her, and crushing in his hand a paper he had mechanically taken up from his bureau. The self-control he had regained by so violent an effort was not proof against that look and tone.

"I have begged you once already not to play at generosity with me. I have no liking for such scenes. Duties! It may be the duty of a woman, who has willingly given her husband both hand and heart, to stay by him and share his misfortune, perhaps his ruin, as she has shared his prosperity. That is not our case. We have no duties to each other, for we never had any rights one upon the other. The only thing which I could offer you in our compulsory union was the possibility of dissolving it; it has been dissolved from the moment that we decided upon a separation. That is my answer to the offer you have made me."

Eugenie's dark eyes were still fixed on his face. The tell-tale lightning-like flash, which at times seemed to discover the unknown depths of his being, came not to-day, and yet to-day of all days did she long to conjure it up at any cost.

Whatever she may have seen or guessed by it--and something she must have divined, or her proud spirit would never have so far bent as to allow her to come hither with her proposal--he would not grant her the triumph of again beholding it or of convincing herself of its true meaning.

He remained perfect master of himself, and left her a prey to torturing doubt. Her woman's instinct had spoken unhesitatingly when Ulric Hartmann's look had glowed upon her yesterday up on the forest heights, and, with the knowledge of what lay behind, horror of it had seized her as well. Yet she had been quite calm then, through all the danger with which she was threatened by an insane pa.s.sion.

Here, where there was nothing to fear, she shook from head to foot in a fever of emotion, and a thick veil seemed to fall on all around, just as the brown eyes opposite were veiled before her. The inward voice was silent now, and yet at this moment she would have given her life to have acquired a certainty.

"You should not make it so hard for me to stay." Her voice betrayed something of the perplexity within her; it wavered between pride and soft submission. "I had much to fight against and much to conquer before I came here. You know it, Arthur, and should spare me."

The words were almost supplicating, but Arthur had reached such a pitch of irritation, he could no longer understand this. The bitter rage, which had taken possession of him and now shook his whole frame, gave its own interpretation to her words, and he answered sharply.

"I do not doubt that the Baroness Windeg is making an immense sacrifice in resolving to bear a hated name yet three months longer, and to remain at the side of a man she so thoroughly despises, notwithstanding that immediate freedom is offered her. I had to hear once how repugnant both are to you, and can judge therefore of what the victory over yourself must have cost you."

"You are reproaching me with the conversation we had on the night of our arrival," said Eugenie in a low tone. "I ... I had forgotten it!"

His eyes blazed now, but not with the light she had sought and hoped for. He was too distant from her, too full of hostility, for that.

"Really? And you do not ask whether I have forgotten it. I was forced to listen then, but that was the limit of what I could bear. Do you think a man will allow himself to be trampled in the dust with impunity, as I was by you on that evening, and then rise from it without further ado when it pleases you to alter your opinion? I was not quite so miserably weak as you imagined; from that time forth I was not weak at all. That hour was decisive for me, but it was decisive for our future also. Whatever may befall me, I will bear it alone. During the last few weeks I have learnt so much, I shall be able to go through with that too, but"--he drew himself up with a glow of pride--"but the woman who on the day after our wedding repulsed me with such haughty contempt, without condescending to ask whether the husband to whom she had given her hand were really as culpable as she believed him, who received my a.s.surance, my given word, that she was in error as the ready pretext of a liar, who, to my question as to whether it might not be worth while to try and redeem so lost a man, flung at me that contemptuous 'No'--that woman shall not stay by me; I will not have her at my side while I am fighting for all my future in this world. I will stand alone!"

He turned away from her in his wrath. Eugenie stood overwhelmed and speechless. Great as had been the change in her husband of late, she had never before seen him roused to pa.s.sion, and at this moment his violence almost frightened her. By the storm, now bursting over her head, she could measure all that had lain hidden behind the indifference which had so revolted her, all that had smouldered within him for months together, until at last it drove him out of that apathy which had become a second nature.

Ah yes, that cold disdainful No! She knew now better than any one how unjust she had been to him, and now that she saw how that word of hers had mortified him, she might have allowed the present hour to make amends for all the evil the other had wrought, if only those last unfortunate words had remained unspoken. They touched her pride, and, when once that was called into play, all clear judgment and reflection were at an end, even though she knew herself to be in the wrong.

"You will stand alone," she repeated. "Well, I will not impose my presence on you. I wished to convince myself that my father's plan was yours also. I see it is so, and therefore I shall leave."

She turned to go. At the door she stopped a moment. It seemed to her that, as she touched the handle, he made a rapid movement as though about to spring after her; but it must have been an illusion, for, when she looked round, he was still standing at the table, deadly pale indeed, but with that answer of hers, that harsh inexorable "No,"

clearly written on his face and entire bearing.

Eugenie summoned up all her courage for one farewell speech.

"We shall only see each other to-morrow in my father's presence, and never again perhaps after that, so ... Good-bye, Arthur."

"Good-bye," said he hoa.r.s.ely.

The door closed behind her; she was gone. The last few moments they could spend alone together had fled; the last bridge between them had broken down. Neither had been willing to yield an inch; neither would speak the word which alone had power to help and save, the one word which would have made good everything, even had the breach between them been ten times as wide. Pride had won the day and sealed their fate.

Grey and gloomy the morning dawned over the hills. In the house all was stirring at an unaccustomed hour. It was necessary to start early, so that the travellers might reach the nearest railway junction in time for the train which should take them on to the capital the same evening. At present there was no one in the breakfast-room but Conrad von Windeg. The Baron was still in his apartment, Eugenie was not visible either, and the young officer appeared to be very impatiently waiting for something or some one. He had paced up and down, had stepped out on to the balcony, and finally flung himself into an arm-chair, but he jumped up quickly as Arthur Berkow came in.